Daniel Buren on Self-Destruction

PARIS—Daniel Buren, one of France’s best-known contemporary artists, has threatened to destroy one of France’s best-known contemporary artworks—and it’s his own. Just weeks after a controversial Time magazine article declared “the death of French culture,” the 69-year-old artist further embarrassed the government by alleging in late December that it had “vandalized” his installation Les Deux Plateaux (“The Two Levels”), one of Francois Mitterand’s controversial grands projets, letting the 260 black-and-white striped columns’ lighting and subterranean fountain go to ruin. The 1986 work in Palais Royal’s 17th-century courtyard in Paris, commonly called "Les Colonnes de Buren," is characteristic of the artist, who is known for adding bold-striped, site-specific installations to landmark architecture. According to the London Times, French Culture Minister Christine Albanel responded to Buren’s threat by saying that Palais Royal will undergo a $20.6 million restoration starting in 2009, with up to $4.7 million allocated to the courtyard and the sculpture. Currently in Burkina Faso for work, Buren tells ARTINFO via email that he has been pressing the culture ministry to repair his sculpture for years, and the promised renovation may come too late.

How exactly has France “vandalized” your work?

As soon as a city, a village, or, above all, a state buys a work of art for a public place, it is obligated to maintain the work, whatever it is. In Paris, you never see a fountain out of order (unless it’s being repaired) or a sculpture defaced by graffiti (it would be immediately cleaned). But there are some exceptions, and they are almost always contemporary works, not old or classical ones! Not maintaining a work of art automatically starts a process that might end with the work’s destruction. The name for such a destruction or defacing is “vandalism.” The responsible party in the case of Les Deux Plateaux is the state of France.

The head of the culture ministry’s architecture and heritage department, Michel Clement, said the columns are likely to be restored in 2009. Are you willing to wait until then?

I haven’t yet spoken with this person. I have an appointment with France’s minister of culture, Christine Albanel, whom I hope to speak with very soon. I’ve been waiting eight years!!! I do believe that my piece will be fixed, but I also know that the last two culture ministries promised to do the necessary repairs during their times in the office. They both left, and I am still waiting!

Why did you choose to speak out about the installation now?

I choose nothing. I’ve said for at least two years that one day or another I will have to take a drastic step, such as asking for the destruction of my work, if the state’s negligence lets my piece decay to the point that it can’t be restored to its original state. This time, this comment was printed in Le Monde 2 [a supplementary weekend magazine to the newspaper Le Monde] and seems to have interested other media all around the world. I wasn’t planning to ask for the work’s destruction now, but considering where we are today, the sooner the better.

How has the public responded to your criticism of the installation’s condition?

All of this happened in the last few weeks, and I’ve been in Africa working! So I don’t have too much information. I know that the people who take the time to say something, generally via the Internet or newspapers, are usually aggressive and would be very happy to see my work destroyed. I think they are an active minority that doesn’t understand the price of the destruction—which will be much more expensive than repairs. The part of Les Deux Plateaux that the public has been calling “Les Colonnes de Buren” is the columns, which millions of people have been touching, climbing, playing with, and skateboarding around over the 22 years they’ve existed, and they’re absolutely intact. The fountain (the second biggest in Paris after the Trocadero) and the electrical system that once illuminated the piece at night are the parts that are no longer working because of the state’s neglect. That’s 50 percent of the piece.

Recent reports have discussed the "demise" of French culture. Is the case of Les Deux Plateaux a symptom of a new, larger negligence of French culture on the part of the French government? Is contemporary art in particular being ignored?

The reports you refer to are just negative propaganda against France, not the first and certainly not the last. They are inaccurate, and the people who wrote them do not understand the situation. It’s rhetorical xenophobia! This is an especially American media habit. They’ve been attacking France for many years about everything: One day they say cooking no longer exists, the next day it’s music or cinema or the arts or museums or fashion or good French wine. This propaganda is particularly stupid and misinformed; at best, it’s a commercial dispute, not a serious argumentation. If it were true, why speak about it? Who is speaking about the demise of Polish culture?

Contemporary art is not ignored in France, which has erected more public works of art than any other country over the last 20 years. The bigger problem is that French authorities have to protect contemporary public works of art. Their neglect is intolerable, even if a weak economy—and certainly not a demise of French culture—is more likely the cause of the situation.